xvii STAGES OF CORRELATION 405 



We have called such correlation cross-relation, because it 

 runs across the order of direct perceptual or practical 

 activity in which the relations of the previous stages have 

 been found. Of the working out of this correlation, 

 language, both as cause and effect, is the central feature. 



This cross connection then appears as the backbone of 

 the third stage. The terms which it connects are not 

 merely related percepts. They are qualities as such, 

 relations as such, elements of continuous identity as 

 such. We have called them collectively elements of 

 affinity between different portions of the world of 

 percepts. These affinities are now explicitly recognised 

 and correlated with one another, thus forming generalisa- 

 tions in which the connection between experience and 

 action always operative is for the first time clearly 

 expressed, and felt in consciousness as connection, as 

 inference. On the other hand, the methods by which 

 the generalisation is drawn from and applied to experience 

 still remain uncriticised. The work of correlation becomes 

 at length comparable to a complete syllogism in which 

 both premisses are made explicit. Yet there is at work a 

 thought-process which, with all the assumptions involved 

 in reasoning on the basis of experience, is not yet taken 

 into account. 



In scope, the correlation that is now made possible is 

 immeasurably widened. In the conceptions of this stage, 

 thought first finds itself possessed of contents set free 

 from the line of practical interests, and also through the 

 possibility of freely breaking up and inter-connecting 

 detached concepts from the perceptual order. In this 

 way a " world of ideas " is formed, going beyond as well 

 as behind experience, and the conceptions which form this 

 world whether logically universal, or like the Self and 

 the State, Individual are equally schemes of reference to 

 great masses of experience, past or future. Thus the 

 permanent elements in experience are grasped, and in 

 experience we must now once more include the experi- 

 ence of the race as handed on by tradition. Similarly, 

 action is subordinated to purposes of comprehensive and 

 abiding interest and to rules of universal applicability. 



